I remember the times before she got cancer when she was so happy and came to visit us almost every day and how she would tell me her cooking secrets. He stopped talking weeks before he died and closed his eyes, my mother said she wishes she could talk and see his eyes one more time. A few days before she died I burst into tears in the car, I thought I had to be strong because my mother and my aunt were talking to me about how I would still have my grandmother in my heart for a long time. And I remember the day she died I had just come home from high school, I was happy and I thought that later that day I would be able to see my grandmother, my father was home and told me that my grandmother had died that morning. I went to bed and cried, the feeling that someone I loved had died made all the pain and grief feel somehow real. I didn't go to school for three days, I didn't even go to the funeral or wake; I knew people asked me where I was. I honestly can't tell you how many times I tell myself that if she died, then everything I feared would come true. I've been trying to convince myself that she's in a better place and not in pain and that she's better up there than down there for longer.